The New AASL National Standards - Am I Ready for the 21st Century? Cassandra Barnett and Valerie Diggs

Cassandra Barnett and Valerie Diggs presented a session on ways to collaborate with teachers and how the new standards help give us an "in" to do so.

So, the question posed is: “Am I ready for the 21st Century?”
How will you answer it? Considering the fact that we’re already here, hopefully most of us are prepared for it. But some of us and the teachers we work with are still stuck in the twentieth century. Even though it wasn’t so long ago, the library and the classroom are very different places now than even in the 1990’s.

Collaboration begets more collaboration. That is the crux of it. And I’ve experienced this firsthand. Teachers talk to other teachers and when you, as librarian, have collaborated on a project that breathed new life into an old project, you can be sure that other teachers will come to you to do the same thing. In my first school library job, by the beginning of my second year I had several teachers who were blogging, using NoodleTools to teach MLA citations and research skills in collaboration with me.

Here is an abbreviated version of the powerpoint presented in the session:

The MA state standards do fit in with the AASL standards…The state standards listed in the conference binder are actually the final set that was accepted. New documents will also be available soon that compare the two sets of standards as well as align the MA standards to the MA state curriculum frameworks and ways that they lend themselves to collaboration with teachers.

Collaboration defined:
Working relationship over time
Requires shared goals
Roles are carefully defined
Comprehensive planning is reuired
Communication is essential
Leadership, resources, risk, control and results are shared

Working with teacher from start to finish and sharing the load; including grading/assessing the unit on which we collaborate.

Factors that contribute to success on collaborative efforts:

• School culture must support it
• Flexible scheduling
• SLMS is a collaborative leader
• Expect apathy and/or dissent among faculty

Be ready to re-evaluate when things don’t go well.

Process & Structure (of collaboration)

• Administrators, teachers and LMC must participate in decision-making
• All decision-makers must support the concept of collaboration
• Group is flexible in the way it organizes and accomplishes its work
• Staff development is essential

Communication

• Often
• Openly discuss issues
• Share information

Resources Needed

• Time (meeting to prepare, coordinate)
• Facilities
• Learning Resources
• Budget

Benefits

• Students more involve in learning
• Sparks creativity among teachers
• Modeling it results in more…
  

But the reality is that we don’t all have supportive school cultures, flexible schedules and the time to meet about collaboration. So, what do we do?

Think outside the box and just try to figure out a way to collect the information you need to connect what students do in the library to what they are doing in the classroom – even if the teachers aren’t involved.
Encourage one teacher at a time, a little bit at a time. Just improving one thing with one teacher will set the course for continued improvement later.

The important thing is to be proactive. Don’t wait for the teachers to come to you, if you know what they are having the students work on, offer the resources that will be helpful to them for the project.

Offer to train teachers to set up their own page on Trackstar, so they can give students a place to start.

Email about new resources.
Deliver books to teachers
Offer to teach/co-teach a part of a unit/project.
Do staff professional development on evaluating resources
Start slow with some teachers so you don’t overwhelm them.
Don’t do it FOR them, do it WITH them.
Offer to help teachers come up with new ways for students to communicate their results in a new way.
Continually check-in to see how things are going with teachers on a project and offer help along the way.
Have brown-bag lunches – they bring lunch, we provide drinks and dessert and do a quick demo about new databases or resources.
Do focus groups to improve collection development (Cassandra does this with faculty)
Do professional development for new teachers and make it clear that the library is a main part of planning and collaborating on projects.
Go to departmental meetings or ask for information at faculty meetings.